“If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind.

“If this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquility of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved; Caesar would have spared his country; America would have been discovered more gradually; and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.”

—Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley
There is little doubt that freakish and unnaturally-assembled storms are a taste of what the future holds under an economic system that has “interfered with the tranquility of domestic affections,” galvanized the forces of nature into a fury of clashing dislocations as we pump ever-more heat-trapping gases into our atmosphere and industrial filth into our lungs.

The riptides of climate change are beginning to tear at the fabric of our biosphere as the earth’s climate system lurches, in ungainly and lumbering jerks, from the relatively dormant and benign stability of the last 10,000 years, toward a more volatile, violent and less hospitable new climatic state previously unknown to human civilization.

Alluding, therefore, to Mary Shelley’s great work of gothic horror through the appellation of Frankenstorm for the confluence of Hurricane Sandy and a cold front is, in many ways, quite apt. Particularly as Shelley herself offered a symbolic criticism of the inner dynamics of capitalism and class society in Frankenstein, captured in the quote above, as the conflicted Victor recounts his tale and the uncontrollable forces that he has unleashed as a result of his compulsion to continue with his project, despite the warning signs that are proliferating around him.

The obsession that took over Victor, his growing alienation from the world, which makes him forsake friends, family, even sustenance, is echoed on a global scale by the unquenchable thirst for profits of the global capitalist monster, which eats through our lives and our planet in search of fresh fields for exploitation and growth. The fact that Victor’s uncontrollable quest consumed him in its flames when his creation turned against him won’t stop similar warning signs preventing capitalism eating itself — and taking the rest of the planet down with it.

That human-induced climate change is part of the reason for Hurricane Sandy, the “largest hurricane in Atlantic history measured by diameter of gale force winds (1,040 mi)”, isexplained by Dr. Kevin E. Trenberth, Distinguished Senior Scientist in the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research:

“The sea surface temperatures along the Atlantic coast have been running at over 30C above normal for a region extending 800km off shore all the way from Florida to Canada. Global warming contributes 0.60C to this. With every degree C, the water holding of the atmosphere goes up 7%, and the moisture provides fuel for the tropical storm, increases its intensity, and magnifies the rainfall by double that amount compared with normal conditions.

Global climate change has contributed to the higher sea surface and ocean temperatures, and a warmer and moister atmosphere, and its effects are in the range of 5 to 10%. Natural variability and weather has provided the perhaps optimal conditions of a hurricane running into extra-tropical conditions to make for a huge intense storm, enhanced by global warming influences.”

As the climate continues to warm, the effect will only increase, leading to more extreme weather events, flooding and drought, as outlined in two recent Nature articles.

And warm it will. Not because we don’t have answers to prevent that from happening and derive our energy from sources other than fossil fuels, but because it’s simply too profitable to change. There is a compulsion inherent to capitalism; the propellant force of profit that powers further growth in a perpetual feedback loop, whereby the colossal forces of production are testing the limits of the planet to absorb the battering its biosphere is taking.

Never has Marx’s comment in the Communist Manifesto on the nature of capitalism been so apposite:

110 Comments

Somedays, I just drink a glass of wine while I watch the people of the world commit mass suicide by pollution, and shake my head at it all. Oh well, at least I feel warm and fuzzy from the wine. A toast to profits before planet, anyone?

Even the Democratic Party platform is silent on ratifying the Kyoto Accords and related international initiatives, and moving our nation forward in joining the rest of the world in coming to grips with climate change caused by human degradation of the environment. Perhaps the great tragedy of Hurricane Sandy will finally be the reality check needed to put us in the right direction.

I tell you what, if we all sat down right now and refused to ever move again, let alone consume, the earth would still warm. Science, unfortunately, has a whole lot of speculation but it has no definitive answers to maintaining the temperate Utopia which our epoch of homo sap has enjoyed. Ecologists have labeled this the Anthropocene as if to say "yes we did" but if we don't move beyond this to say "yes we can" we will not survive to label that next epoch. Who or what is at fault is entirely irrelevant.

Actually you're wrong. In the past 7 years, the so-called 'hurricane drought', fewer major hurricanes have made landfall is all. It is absolutely incorrect to say there are 'fewer hurricanes than ever'.

It's all a bunch of crap; regulating world climate in this manner is like fishing for sharks with a paper clip; no matter, we cannot destroy the world, nor can we inhabit it without transforming it environmentally. Our number one threat as a species is not particles in the lower atmosphere - it's over population and its effects on deforestation, water pollution, etc.

The trees on that site are 4-5 feet tall already and transported to individual homes/businesses as landscaping. That's CHEAP for a tree for such purposes. Someone growing them on a tree farm would plant them as seeds/seedlings and sell them for commercial/industrial purposes.

Hemp has it's purposes and I have nothing against it as an industrial/commercial product at all. But it's not something that can easily take the place of lumber.

My point here is that we can grow sustainable trees AND plants and we do. They are harvested and replanted all the time. And it doesn't necessarily take 30 years "minimum".

Our forestry is well-managed, generally. Unfortunately, due to rampant consumerism and the distances involved between manufacturer and consumer, vast quantities of lumber ends up shredded into pulp to feed the cardboard packaging industry. Not to mention the enormous amount of styrofoam, a lot of which ends up swirling around in our ocean gyres, eventually finding its way into the food chain.

Hemp is a perfect fibre for both cardboard, and press-board to replace styrofoam. It is also an essential long-fibre answer to the problems of recycling paper and cardboard. You can only recycle paper pulp so many times before the fibres become too short to make new products from.

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Jul 24, 2008 – Hi, I am trying to find out how to trurn hemp into plastic bottles. If anyone knows or has any information on this post it here. John Tolle-Barlow.

Just to let you know i know plastics I am getting a degree in mechanical engineering we have multiple plastic classes. So i know what it entails and i will say that i have heard about the benefits of hemp but it is still competing against other things in the same market.

So you've had extensive exposure to hemp and hemp products/plastics? Good deal - then you are in a position to extoll on it's virtues and campaign for it's inclusion into the industrial marketplace - Hey?

Sure it's a good thing. Our thirty acres is covered in trees both fruiting and lumber varieties.

On the styrofoam, I'm aware of where it comes from. I'm just abhorred at the incredible amount of it being produced, just to transport one big-screen TV.

Beaches are covered in the stuff, and so are our oceans. There are viable alternatives, and pressboard is one of them. Some manufacturers have made the switch already, for whatever reason.

Oh, and I'm sure that with some tweaking, hempseed oil can be used to make a similar product that will eventually break down into something that isn't going to poison our food chain like petrochemical plastics are already doing.

Of course. How dare I believe that you couldn't possibly know everything about everyone on the planet, and their motives, and the reason's behind their actions. Everyone, everywhere, are just like the Chinese...

I believe it was shadz that pointed out to me a couple months ago that, considering hemp's fast growth rate, it would be absolutely ideal for sequestering CO2. It's amazing that we have at least part of the problem literally in the palm (or thumb and forefinger, hehehe) of our hand, and the powers refuse to do anything about it.

Yeah, I know. Hemp's not the one you want between aforesaid digits. It was a late-night attempt at humor. But the sequestering aspect, definitely doable. Not to mention the myriad other commercial and industrial aspects. It's madness. It really is.

And getting a whole lot more people active in the process. We're going to need a whole lot of grass roots endeavors, because it's clear the big boys have no interest in it. If enough people get it moving, maybe, just maybe, somewhere along the line the pols may start to notice. THEN they're get involved, of course, for their own selfish, political gains. And they're the ones with the power and money, so they are needed in the equation.

I truly can't figure out what's wrong with those clowns in charge. Denial only scratches the surface. There's some kind of deep pathology going on. It's like playing Russian roulette with four or five chambers loaded. And I know no one's immune from the craziness to come, but as far as weather is concerned, I'm quite concerned with those living near the coasts. All the coasts, not just the US, of course.

The planet has ALWAYS experienced "savage weather events", or do you "deny" those facts? In the past, such Frankenstorms didn't kill very many people or destroy much of anything BECAUSE THEY WEREN'T THERE to destroy. Building home on or near the edge of the oceans has never been a smart thing to do and yet we keep rebuilding them every year after the next hurricane tears them apart.

Because the science is NOT settled about exactly how the ocean responds to thermal expansion, El Ninos, earthquakes and the transoceanic conveyor (and various other things)-not to mention the fact that LAND also RISES-all that we can do is estimate and make best guesses about the future sea levels in any given location.

We build communities in tornado alley, on the verge of massively strong and wild oceans, and on top of geological fault lines. Even if there was NO global warming at all, nature would continue to do what nature has ALWAYS done-change the face of this planet.

Well hell it's 10/31/2012 - and finally climate change and 100 year storms happening every couple of years in unpredictable ways and locations has finally made it onto MSM discussions. UN - F'n believable. Will they continue to talk about it from now on(?) or taper off and let it die a silent death - until the next one.

I was angry before when they dropped the ball on addressing issues of environmental concerns storms droughts pollution. Now I am in a place where it would be easy to explode if it all gets swept back under the rug again.

The U.S. has always been lucky in a sense to have been provided with early warnings again and again. For 9/11/2001, we had the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. For New Orleans/Katrina 2005, we had the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Do we get the message from 1988's record heat that eventually led to the Kyoto protocol? Is Sandy enough of an early warning?

Sandy is not an early warning - nope - a confirmation that the environment is screwed up - and that it is long past time that we should have been doing something to change/dump our fossil fuel habit - among other things.

We really need to get off of our fossil fuel habit for many excellent reasons. We subsidized the consumption of fossil fuels in many ways and that got us into all kinds of nightmarish encounters. It is a little similar to other countries' saying that the U.S. foreign aid is a smaller percentage of its GDP than theirs. If the money goes out through a different account, it will not be counted as foreign aid, nor will it be counted as subsidy for fossil fuel consumption, right?

Develop and implement true green energy technology and export that as aid rather then billions of dollars to be misspent or hoarded or sending arms - lets promote peace and prosperity - and stop poisoning the world in one way or another.

Theories about cyclical weather patterns and pollution should be treated as separate issues. Pollution is bad and industry needs to be regulated. We don't know enough about long-term cyclical weather patterns to know how much man made pollution can effect them. If there was to be an abrupt climate shift noone will know how much we contributed to it. Stop polluting so much and stop being hysterical about the whole issue.

Those hurricanes were in the usual zone for that kind of weather event, and in the usual season.

Sandy hit New York late in October. How about you find some statistics comparable to Sandy for us?

Oh, and I forgot to mention, for the first time in weather reporting history, a hurricane warning carried a blizzard alert, with the western front of Sandy dropping two or more feet of snow. See if any of your usual hurricanes did that.

It is nearly impossible to prove that human activities caused this or that hurricane to veer this or that way or strengthen or weaken.

It is also irrelevant what the actual reason is before taking action because there are a whole host of other excellent reasons that can justify our getting off of fossil fuel consumption: cheap oil has run out; coal poisons our environment, our bodies, and makes our children stupid; fracking messed up our wells; U.S. defense spending is huge because we need to safeguard oil prices worldwide (it is not even "our oil supply" any more because of the globalized oil market -- wherever oil is involved, our troops may need to charge in to stabilize the situation for our allies and not-so-allies alike for the sake of the global economy); fossil fuel consumption is expensive for consumers so insulation, conservation, and efficiency improvement can save a tidy sum of money and we can use that, can't we?

There is the idea of actionable intelligence and I believe that the intelligence gathered and corroborated demands actions on reducing fossil fuel consumption.

I remember the days when the auto industry complained that providing seat belts in cars and catalytic converters to clean up the exhaust would kill the auto industry. Decades later, is the auto industry still around? Are we driving more miles with lower fatality rate? Are we breathing cleaner air even with more cars on the roads? Yes, yes, and yes.

Industries have great ability to achieve their objectives when they have to. Sulfur dioxide emission was reduced successfully by cap-and-trade even though at the time industry was vehemently against it. Governments need to set worthwhile and realistic goals for industries because industries are amoral and will become immoral if governments do not harness them with moral goals. It is not an attempt to impede industries but to make them aim high and succeed.

The U.S. auto industry's successful lobbying against higher mileage standard for decays (I meant decades but it is really cute and almost apt) only served to make foreign cars the dominant purchase of U.S. auto buyers and killed off quite a bit of the U.S. auto industry. In a sense, their failure at preventing their dreaded standard would have done them great good as well as preventing our soldiers having to barge in all around the world to secure the oil supply.

The days are over for when when industry, politicians, and scientists could work together. Nixon liked the idea of protecting people and the environment. Too bad he decided to get into burglary. Dems are more concerned with creating jobs than anything. They claim they have the science to back up green jobs. I don't know. Look at all the energy it takes to recycle. Is it worth it? I don't know. I say stop the big polluters they're nuts.

Innovations in reducing material usage can be worthwhile. Reducing is better than reusing, reusing is better than recycling, and recycling is better than trashing. If you can show the big polluters how their pollution can be harnessed to increase their profits, they will listen and stop their pollution as a side effect.

I never said going off of fossil fuel completely. Anything as big as national energy source will take many decades to change but we must set the goal to get off of it completely eventually and strive earnestly to reach the goal rather than repeating the sordid history of U.S. national energy "policy" (simply put: jitterbug dancing with guns for oil) for at least the last four decades if not longer than that. Plentifulness is no justification for using any material. Somebody said that we did not run out of rocks when our civilizations exited from the Stone Age. Getting fossil fuel is no easy task these days in New York and New Jersey. I really wish that what you said were true! There is plentiful gasoline in some gas stations but they cannot get it out to the motorists (and make a tidy profit at that). It sounds ridiculous but it is unfortunately true. Regardless of what politicians had said, the gasoline has not flowed freely yet.

EPA is probably the ONLY U.S. agency that can strike fear into the hearts of American industries. The current administration is at least playing behind the curtains for the corporations so your accusation of its being anti-American may not be far-fetched at all. This is probably not what you really meant but the EPA was created to carry out very national American mandates such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act which were hard-won lessons learned by our forebears when they had environmental disasters galore. China and India are proceeding exceedingly well-conformed to the path of our forebears so we may someday see rivers on fire and malformed babies there, too.

Doubt it. When people claim that our activities are changing the weather on a global scale it sounds dumb. WE DON"T KNOW. What matters is that some people get off on pollution and they need to be contolled.

People have a hard time remembering what happened last week, and that trait might have something to with the corp-owned infotainment replacing investigative journalism.

We have to follow suit in the early days, hence the use of soundbytes, like 99% and oligarchs and MSM. Hell, they even shortened climate change to AGW, and I don't even know what that acronym stands for.

AGW is Anthropogenic Global Warming. It is likely a term created by the profit-driven interests to confuse us at our Tower of Babel. It sounds scientific but definitely splits hair as if we can truly determine or care at all whether global warming is coming from your carbon dioxide or my carbon dioxide, your chickens' methane or my puddle's methane, or that volcano or our sun.

I guess I could have looked it up, but I'm wary of acronyms. Like you mention, they can be intentionally misleading. I prefer the term climate change, because warming is just one small part of it.

What needs to be driven home to serial skeptics, is the more frequent occurrence of more radical weather "events" for want of a better word.

The way weather patterns occur, if one region is experiencing extreme drought coupled with higher-than-average temperatures, an adjacent region will be experiencing more rain or snow or lower temperatures.

This pattern was clearly shown two years running in Australia, with huge droughts in the foodbowl of the southwest, while the whole east coast was inundated at the same time, with the monsoon trough extending right down to Tasmania, which is in the "roaring forties" of the Southern ocean.

It has been clear to me for quite a while that something is amiss with the seasons. Plants flowered earlier and birds came to nest earlier, too. A bit of warming is not really that bad (I like my almost nonexistent heating bill last winter) but the global changes that can come with it in the extreme cases are very disconcerting and we need to do something drastic to slow the rate of change to head off catastrophes.

The hole in the ozone layer was identified, along with the cause of it, and actions were taken to remedy the situation. Those actions are working.

Problem with climate change is, the whole goddamn system we accept as normal human existence is the cause, and most of us, particularly those who profit from it, are loathe to change even one little bit.

Australia's gov introduced a carbon tax, which most here think is pretty much a pointless imposition on consumers considering the fact that our economy is only doing so well because we are exporting coal by the mountain load, as well as digging whopping big holes in the ground and fracking like there's no tomorrow.

Do what you can -- can you trade your traveling with someone at a different location? Something like: you scratch my back and I scratch your back. None of you then needs to make the trips. Some businesses can be conducted over long distances as long as the trust exists.

When I do go building, I take my swag and a tent, and either camp onsite, which is okay with most clients, or I stay in a local trailer park. Saves so much in both time and fuel burning. Mostly I stay at home these days, growing produce and farming hens now. Most of my purchases are online, and get delivered. We sell our produce at the farm gate. Mostly eggs and pumpkins, which keep all year in a cool spot.

Promoting food consumption closer to the base of the food web can reduce the environmental impact and also make people healthier and wealthier. There is more food left over for others if people consume more plants instead of animal products. The environmental impact per capita will be reduced. On a predominantly plant-based diet, people can avoid most of the degenerative diseases and become healthier. Also such a diet tends to be much cheaper than an animal-product-based diet so following such a diet tends to make people wealthier, too.

Agreed. I'm a big eater of pepitas, which are an ancient aztec foodsource, and one of the few whole foods. I just gotta figure out a way to dehull my pumpkin seeds, and I'll be set.

As for the transportation of foods, you're right. People are just used to buying what they want, when they want. I go to local grower's markets, and just accept what is available, and adjust the menu to suit. These markets are extremely popular in Australia, and despite many attempts from major retailers to have them controlled or shut down, local councils are allowing them to spring up, often in school grounds, allowing the schools to make an income from charging a small fee for stall holders.

Having lived through 1988's summer heat, I learned to respect mother nature's inclinations and go with her flow rather than fight against it. In this matter, "winning" can actually be losing and "losing" can actually be winning so coordinating with nature can work wonders if one does not succumb to the "NOW" urge.

Yes, timing and working with rather than against nature can help one be happier and healthier. A clothes dryer (there is no EnergyStar rating for any clothes dryer because that is an oxymoron technically) becomes mostly unnecessary when one has acquired the meteorological knowledge or listened to the weather forecast. In the olden days, our ancestors could look at our environmental 360-degree 3+1 dimensional display and forecast the future with high certainty. That was why they had survived to produce us. We have different ways now but the display is still here and we are probably as intelligent as our ancestors if not more to be able to comprehend it. We may just have forgotten much but that is curable if we keep our senses open and learn.

Hulling pumpkin seeds is something I'm looking into. We have a few dozen macadamia trees, and I really don't mind cracking those by hand, because they sell for 10 bucks a pound, and I love to eat them.

Good for you! It sounds like you are in a rather fertile part of Australia with enough water for many agricultural crops. Australia is otherwise rather arid mostly, aside from the coastal mountain ranges on its east coast, a little bit on its South and West fed by the seasonal rain, in contrast to the very wet and hot northern territories where I imagine you to be.

Hmmmm...too modest! I will reiterate that most people could learn a lot from you to help our planet, and the beautiful peoples upon it, to survive far more peacefully and healthfully than it currently is. Care to argue some more?! ; )

I looked up those two terms, and I have to say...that was absolutely fascinating. I'm beginning to think that I've lived a sheltered life, given that I have embraced naturopathy for years and never came across those terms!

I can't wait to use this method in the spring with my garden!

I got rid of most of my 'stuff' a decade ago. Being a prisoner to one's possessions is something the oligarchs don't seem to mind though. The fools. I don't know that they ever experience true selfless happiness.

Now...George Carlin. The Master. Nothing quite as refreshing as intellect + humour. With all the brilliant and intelligent things he said, I still laugh the hardest when he did a skit where he says "Tarzan f#cks a zebra"!

I know I know it is a sickness - lets take something pretty simple and straight forward easy to understand and lets see how complex and confusing that we can make it ( that will drive people away faster then applying an electric cattle prod to them ) and the stuff that is somewhat complex - we can make really bizarre and ..............................................

I don't do the "I told you so" thing with people I've been trying to help to see the bigger picture, but I sometimes see the light in their eyes change, and I know I've made just that little bit of a difference.

Now that my family are nearing the end of their working lives, they look at what I've done, and where I've been, and I sense a touch of jealousy, that they've had their collective noses to someone else's grindstone, and all they've got to show for it, is a house full of stuff, and a shiny car.

LOL - I like how you just snubbed empty materialism - with personal enlightenment and growth - I have only been working on my own enlightenment for just over 50 years now. How is it said(?) ( a down under expression of congratulation ) - GoodonYa?